Link Dump Friday N° 363

Fridays are sort of like the tease of the work week. You know what's coming, but it seems to take forever to get there, seconds not so much ticking by as they are inching with the slow unhurried pace of the shift of plate tectonics. So why not play some games? I mean, when you look up, it's still going to be hours earlier than it feels like it should, but hey... shiny graphics!

2048 - Gabriele Cirulli's 1024-inspired simple puzzle game is one of those things I just really should not have access to in my browser when things are expected of me, because I keep sneaking back to it. Similar to Threes!, all you have to do is slide numbers around a grid to try to combine pairs of identical numbers until you get to 2048... without locking up the screen. It's harder than it sounds, and a clean presentation makes this one of those bare bones yet addictive puzzle games you can't help but keep fiddling with, even if it isn't exactly new.

Shybot - Skudgee's retroMetroidvania game might be a little rough around the edges, but ain't it just the cutest? You control a little robot who, after relentless teasing from his peers, winds up getting lost and trapped in a very dangerous place indeed... though fortunately there are a lot of things to discover to help you! With a note-perfect old school atmosphere and simple gameplay, all Shybot really needs to shine is some less obscure boss battles... and a smaller hitbox!

Piggy in the Puddle - If this cute as pie physics puzzle game feels familiar, it's probably because you played the developer's other game, Golden Scarabaeus. Get the porker into the mud bath in each level by manipulating the objects around him... and by changing the pig itself! Though far fiddlier than the physics in Golden Scarabaeus, the mechanics you'll encounter are almost exactly the same, so if you enjoyed that, you'll be happier than a pig in... uh... mud with this!

Shippo Neko and the Missing Fried Shrimp - Even if you can't read Japanese, you should still be able to appreciate NekoGames' beautifully designed little platformer about a cat with some... unique abilities who goes off looking for, well, some missing fried shrimp, which is a pretty important task, tell you what. The distinctive art style really makes this one shine, and though the gameplay is perhaps overly simple with slow controls, this kitty's acrobatics make it more that worth a peek.

Whooo-Wheee, that 2048 is some addictive game.
Any strategy suggestions? All I've sort of figured out so far is to keep lots of small numbers around, tempting as it may be to accumulate larger numbers.
Oh, and always try to keep a 2 (and if possible a 4) open, not surrounded by other numbers.

Also, be careful on Shippu Neko. At one point I couldn't figure out how to get up a ladder, so I tried to scale a nearly vertical slope and glitched out of the map. And there's no reset button or failsafe for falling out of the world, so you have to reload the whole page.

2048 is deeply annoying (and addictive). It's one of those games where actually seem to do better in the early stages when you are just mucking around than later on when you think you know what's going on.

Is there any logic to when and where the new numbers appear? Why do you sometimes get a 4, for instance?

Because there is no way to know when a 4 will pop up instead of a 2 in 2048, and because the location of that new number is random, one cannot make calculated moves. One does just as well (if not better) by unfocusing the eyes a little and just swinging things around in hopes of bringing boxes of the same color together.

The only strategy I've come up with in 2048 is to (try to) keep your largest block close to your next largest block(s) and so on. Trying to manipulate one block around to meet its match is really hard. But if your large blocks are close together you can get a cascade of matching.

This is super addictive and a lot of people on Hacker News (ycombinator) have been forking the project and coming up with their own versions. One really nice one has an Undo button. Another lets two people play, although I haven't tried that one to see how well it works.

Shybot: I can't figure out how to do it reliably (read: "I can manage to do it maybe once every few minutes of trying"), but you can jump > crouch > uncrouch > airjump sometimes. I suspect that this could be used for sequence breaking but, since it's 3㏂, I'll leave it to someone else. If it helps, I've had the most luck near walls, so perhaps there is invisible geometry, as well...?

[You can also uncrouch halfway through dropping through a floor, but I don't think that that will be as useful, since it just slides you back up.]

2048 isn't random--at least, the randomness doesn't prevent every game from being winnable. There are scripts out there that will give you the best move for any given situation. The best overall strategy is keeping your high-value pieces still--that is, locking them in a full row/column and only moving perpendicular to that--and adding to them until you've got 2048.

2048 is extremely addictive.. until I came across the AI solved version (somewhere on the same site). Knowing that there is (and requires) a very specific set of strategies to solve it kills it for me, not a bad thing.

Love the cuteness of the neko game. I would play it again just for the cuteness factor.

Is there a reason why we do not get to rate the games in a link dump collection?

Unfortunately, due to the format of LDF, any rating applied to the article would be applied to all the games in it. So even if you rated one game a five, that five would also be applied to the other games regardless of whether you wanted it. You can rate LDF games individually that we have HOSTED on their respective game pages, but games that are not available for hosting cannot be rated.

11 deaths on Shybot, only because I read some comments above and played a bit more carefully! xD I only got 2/5 goo. Wish there was a map, as someone mentioned above. And I also wish there was something indicating that

the electric bubble(?) creature

was the final boss. Good thing you can Continue the game from your last save point after completing it once. Now to get the goo! :D

Bah. Although you keep all the goo you collect (even if you die before reaching another save point), it seems if you're at the save point where you'd use the goo, if you don't have 3/5 goo by then, it's impossible to collect all the goo without starting over :(

Right before the goo checkpoint, there's an area where you have to jump off to the right and hope for the best (a long, safe fall). There's no going back to the Misty Cavern or Shifting Temple after that, unless you manage to die without running into a save point in the next area.

=====After goo checkpoint=====
2 Hive
- crouch through 2 short "thin" floors, area to right with spikes on walls and ceiling, and spike monster; far right
- room with one block platforms and few/no spikes; bottom right

I got all the goo in Shybot, but the benefits weren't worth it for me since they only last for the Fearful Tower which by then, was too late.

When the bucket said, "Bonk me for repairs.", I thought it meant I could bonk it whenever I wanted to and get a hit point back. I sort of wish that was the case, although it would have made things too easy at this point. All it does is restore one hit point once. This would have been great for the Hive, oh well.

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